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About Belcourt, North Dakota

Belcourt is a census-designated place (CDP) in Rolette County, North Dakota in the United States. It is within the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation. The population was 2,078 at the 2010 census. The community is the seat of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. Belcourt was originally known as Siipiising, which is Anishinaabe (Chippewa) for "creek that sings with life-giving water." The name refers to what European-Americans called Ox Creek, which flows through the center of town.The community was named Belcourt in honour of Georges-Antoine Belcourt, a French Jesuit missionary who served the Chippewa through his mission in the mid-nineteenth century. In his 1849 report to his superiors, he described the Chippewa historical territory in the Pembina River basin as covering an area about 400 miles from north to south and 500 miles from east to west.The town is served by different forms of media, such as KEYA, a tribal radio station that can be found at 88.5 FM; the Turtle Mountain Times, the tribally-owned newspaper which was established in 2003; and The Tribal Independent, an independently-owned online newspaper established in 2011.